Somebody Who Cares
by fanficnerd232
Summary: Ria is upset. Loker tries to help. Not much of a plot. Oneshot.


Author (account): weirdfanfics232

Date: February 12, 2019

Wordcount: 2,085

Fandom: Lie To Me

Warnings: OOC

**A/N: I don't even know what this story is. It's a bunch of weird things put together honestly. I just needed to get it out of my head. Enjoy!**

All Ria wanted to do was sleep. Preferably for a few days, although she would take any amount of sleep in that moment. If she was counting right, it had been two days since she slept. It was Monday evening and the last time she could remember putting her head to her pillow was on Saturday night, before that blasted phone call. The phone call from her half-sister Ava that came close to midnight and had repercussions she never could have dreamt up.

She had taken the day off work to stay by Ava's side in the hospital. She did it more for her own sake than for Ava's. Her sister was still unconscious and it was unclear when she would wake up, although the doctors were fairly certain she would. She justified taking the day by telling herself that she needed to be at the hospital to sign consent forms for Ava's surgeries and to figure out how on earth to pay for all the procedures her sister needed since Ria's health insurance didn't cover Ava and she had no access to her father's house or his health insurance information. Oh and of course to make the decision to take her father off of life support since there was essentially no chance of him waking up.

The staff at the hospital had tried to talk to Ria about her options of what to do about her father. They told her she didn't have to take him off, that they could continue to monitor him for any signs of change or could move him to a long-term facility, but she barely listened to them. For one thing, she simply couldn't afford it. Her old friend Oliver happened to be on the police force in her hometown where her father still lived and was working on finding her father's health insurance, however until they could find it, she had no way of paying the hospital and even when they did find it, she didn't know how much it covered. And for another thing, Ria had basically no interest in keeping him alive. He was an extremely abusive man who had been nothing but cruel to her for her entire life. He had messed her up in more ways than she could count. And in addition to her other two reasons, he had gotten himself into this mess. It hadn't taken them long to figure out that her father had been driving drunk. He and Ava were driving on the highway, where they had been going would be a mystery until Ava woke up, and he had swerved into oncoming traffic and crashed into another car. He had worse injuries since his side had taken the brunt of the impact but Ava had been severely injured too. Ria couldn't stop thinking of her sister's voice on the other end of that phone call as she sobbed _"I think he's dead". _The words would haunt her dreams.

Ria walked quickly down the sidewalk to her apartment building. She'd taken a cab to the hospital, knowing that she was much too tired to drive and not wanting to end up in the same position as her family members, but had decided to walk home to take some time to just think without being surrounded by well-meaning doctors and nurses and lawyers talking to her about what she could do. In the end, she'd taken her dad off life support. They told her it could take a little while for him to actually stop breathing. She didn't bother to wait around. Before she left the hospital, she checked on Ava one last time and then left, trying to push all thoughts of her father out of her mind.

Her high heels clicked against the floor once she got inside. She pressed the button for the elevator, not willing to walk up seven flights of stairs to get to her apartment. She sighed and looked at her reflection in the elevator doors. She was dressed nicely since she'd felt like the conversations she would be having that day called for it. But now it was 9 p.m. and she just wanted to change into something more comfortable and try to sleep. The chances of her actually sleeping were slim and she had a feeling she would be calling in sick to work again the next day but she had to at least try.

The elevator opened. Luckily nobody else got on with her for the entire ride up. She dug her keys out of her purse and unlocked her door. The second she walked inside, she kicked off her heels and dropped her purse on the floor, too tired to hang it up in its proper place. Then she turned around to head to her bedroom, only to find herself making eye contact with her co-worker, Eli Loker.

She stared at him for a couple seconds before sighing and saying in a tired voice, "Why?"

"You took the day off," he said. He was sitting on the arm rest of her couch in a relaxed manner but his arms were crossed.

"Yeah. So?"

"You never take the day off. Especially not sick days."

"I do sometimes," she said, unbuttoning her blazer. In reality, she knew he was right. She never missed work, even when she was sick. It was ingrained in her from when she was a kid that doing such things was not allowed. If she tried to tell her dad she was sick and couldn't go to school, she got a beating and then went anyway. If her teachers sent her home because she was clearly sick, the beating was only that much worse. Her father reminded her over and over that nobody was to know she was hurting. At the time, she had just blindly followed what he told her to do. As she grew up, she realized he was teaching her not to show weakness so that she would never tell anyone what he was doing to her. But even when she knew that, she still struggled to take time off since those lessons had been so ingrained in her as a child.

"Ria, you didn't even take a sick day when you had a concussion."

"Yeah… well…" she didn't have a response for that.

Loker squinted at her. "You don't even look sick."

She considered lying for a second and saying she was but then she remembered who she was talking to. Working where she did could be very annoying sometimes.

"Yeah that's because technically I'm not," she sighed. She took off her blazer and threw it on her island counter next to her phone and keys.

"What so you just took a sick day for the fun of it?" he asked.

"Loker, look at me." She gestured vaguely to her outfit. "It's not like I just took the day to lounge around at home or something."

"So where were you then?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Well you left us with a bunch of work to do so you better have a good explanation."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll tell Lightman that you weren't actually sick."

"He's not going to care."

Loker raised his eyebrows. "You willing to risk that?"

"Did you come here just to threaten me?"

"Actually, I came here to see how you were feeling. I figured it would take quite a sickness to convince Ria Torres to call into work."

She felt a slight pang of guilt in her heart that he was worried enough to come see how she was when she wasn't even actually sick.

She walked over to the arm chair beside Loker and sat down, pulling her feet up beside her. Loker moved from sitting on the arm rest of her couch to sitting on the actual couch cushion so he wasn't towering over her.

"I was at the hospital," she said.

"Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine. But my sister and my dad were in a car accident on Saturday. I'm the next of kin for both of them so I needed to be there today."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For hounding you about it. And that they're in the hospital."

Ria shrugged. "Nothing we can do about it. I didn't mean to worry you by taking a sick day. We just need to give 24 hours notice for a personal day and I didn't think of it yesterday with all the hectic stuff going on."

"You could have just explained it to Lightman, I'm sure he would have given you the day off."

"I wasn't really feeling up to explaining it. It was easier just to take a sick day." She smiled a bit. "It's not like I'm running short on them or anything."

Loker shifted a bit. "Are your sister and dad going to be okay?"

"My dad's as good as dead," she said bluntly. "We took him off life support so he's probably dying as we speak unless he makes some kind of miraculous recovery."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's hard when a parent dies."

"Don't be sorry, he was an ass." She rubbed a hand over one of her eyes and yawned. "And my sister will probably be okay. She hasn't woken up yet but the doctors said that was normal for her injuries and she should wake up within the next day or two. She'll still be in the hospital for a while but she should be alive so that's something. My main concern now is figuring out who is going to take care of her now that our dad's dead."

"Your mom?" he asked.

Ria shook her head. "Dead."

She didn't bother getting into the explanation of how they were actually half-sisters and had different moms. Ria hadn't seen her mom in over 10 years and Ava's mom had died recently so it wasn't like either of them were really an option.

"Man, you guys don't have the best luck, do you?"

Ria snorted. "You're telling me."

She yawned again, the second time in as many minutes. Loker tilted his head a bit.

"When was the last time you slept?"

She shrugged, "I don't a couple days ago."

"And by a couple days you mean…"

"I slept for a couple hours on Saturday night until Ava called me and I had to go to the hospital to see her."

"And you haven't slept since?" Loker asked. Ria shook her head and yawned again. "Okay, you should go to bed now."

Truthfully, there was nothing more she wanted to do. But she also hated being told what to do, especially by Loker.

"I'm fine."

"You most definitely are not. You need to sleep."

"Says the guy who sleeps like once every three days."

Loker rolled his eyes. "I'm not that bad."

"Whatever, the point is you're no better than me."

"Well I can survive on barely any sleep. You look like you're about to fall over. And unless you're planning to call in sick again tomorrow, you need to be awake for work."

She stared at him for a second. "Why do you care so much?"

"I just don't want you falling asleep at work tomorrow because then I'll have to pick up after you and—"

"But you came over today because I called in sick. You were worried enough to come out of your way to see me. And then to stay until I finally got home."  
He stayed silent. He couldn't lie either; she would see right through him. She suddenly was hit by the memory of the first time they'd met when he had said he wanted to sleep with her. He was practicing radical honesty at the time. At some point, she couldn't pinpoint exactly when, he had given up on it. To her surprise, she found herself missing it a bit.

"I guess I'll get going now," he said, standing up. Ria stood up as well. "I'll see you at work tomorrow?"

"Yeah," she said with a small nod. He nodded back and headed for the door. At the last moment before exiting, he turned back.

"If you ever call in sick again, you should probably expect me to come by."

Then he walked out and closed the door behind him. Ria smiled a bit. The feeling of somebody actually caring enough about her to come check on her was unusual but she had to admit, she kind of liked it.


End file.
